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Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a critical tool in your efforts to attract top talent and keep your best employees. Think of your EVP as the elements that would make up the second half of this sentence spoken by one of your employees, “I give my time, talents, best effort, ideas for making things better and drive to succeed to (fill in your company name) and in turn I get…”

These should be your key selling points when you are talking to great candidates and when you are reminding your employees why they continue to make the good decision to stay with your organization.

The Corporate Executive Board has released data demonstrating the importance of the EVP. An attractive EVP can reduce the compensation premium needed to hire top talent by 50 percent. An effective EVP enables an organization to improve the commitment of employees by up to 37 percent.

Now let’s be clear, I realize not every employer can have Google-level perks. But you need to concentrate on the key things that differentiate you as an employer against the other companies with which you compete for talent.

Here are a few areas where you can differentiate:

Pay

Health insurance benefits

Vacation and paid time off

Work-life balance or blend

A clear organizational purpose/mission

Meaningful work

Career development and learning opportunities

Positive work environment

Autonomy

Big goals and a driven workforce

It’s not just one thing that makes a difference. And despite the fact that I listed pay first, that is only one piece. Many people would be more than happy to take the average wage for their role to work in a great environment where they are well respected, with a great work-life balance and the chance to make meaningful contributions.

Evaluate your organization’s EVP. If you are not sure what it is, ask a group of your best employees. Capture it. Put it on paper.

Now think about the audience who you want to be able to attract and keep at your organization. Do research on that group. Does your EVP match up to what’s important to them in an employer? If not, what do you need to change to make your organization a more attractive destination for them?

An important point is that you need to make sure your EVP aligns with the wants and needs of the talent you want to attract and keep. If it doesn’t, you are investing money in the wrong things. Reevaluate the situation and make choices based on what you know about your audience.

Having a well-formulated EVP based on strategic choices you’ve made as an employer will give you an advantage over your competition for talent. If you haven’t already developed a clear EVP, now is the time to do so.

At CAI, we are happy to talk you through this and all of your other HR issues and opportunities. Feel free to give our Advice & Resolution team a call at 919-878-9222 or 336-668-7746.

Bersin by Deloitte’s “Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organization for a Rapidly Changing World” included this important guidance:

Invest, refocus and redesign talent acquisition — leveraging network recruiting, brand reach and new technologies. In addition to marketing their organization and career opportunities, organizations should also market their mission, purpose, leadership team and work experience. Millennials and high performers look at all of these factors in an employer today.

The ten predictions from Bersin by Deloitte for 2015 cover topics from employee engagement to culture to new HR technologies and more. According to the report, the big overall trend for this year is that companies will have to re-engineer the way they do HR. What makes the prediction above so important is that last line, specifically the reference to high performers.

We are now in a job market where high performers can choose whichever company they want to contribute their talent and knowledge. They can also much more easily walk away from a company that they feel is not allowing them to be as successful as they could be, or that they don’t believe in.

And these high performers are critical. How critical? A study by Ernest O’Boyle and Herman Aguinis published in 2012 found that a high performer can deliver 400% more productivity than the average performer. 400%!!

So if your top performers, or 4Xers, and the 4Xers you’d like to recruit to your organization, are paying extra close attention to your mission, purpose, leadership team and employer brand, you want to make sure that you’ve put the time in to develop those key items in a way that will attract and retain that top talent.

Take a look at your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). If you’ve got it documented, great. If not, document it. What makes your organization a special place for employees to work? What differentiates you as an employer from those other companies that you compete with for employees?

Evaluate your EVP. Is it what you want it to be? What will you need to do to continue to attract and retain 4Xers over the next two to three years? If you are where you need to be, great, continue on. If not, how can you get there?

Use that EVP in your discussions with candidates and employees. Make sure your executives and managers use it. And most importantly, make sure you deliver it to employees. Nothing can be worse than saying one thing and doing another.

Develop your core “talent” messaging by choosing three to five key points of your EVP to highlight. What are the things that matter most to your audience? Not sure what they are? Ask your best employees.

Determine the demographics of your target audience (4Xers) and how to reach them. Social media? Websites/blogs? Trade publications? Newspapers?

Establish your presence in those areas and start your messaging. Maximize your social media presence on whatever channel(s) your target audience loves. Learn how best to use these mediums so that you are not just blasting “advertising” at your audience.

Highlight employees. Ask your best employees to shoot a video or offer a statement about what working for your organization means to them. Recognize your employees for accomplishments or for extra effort. Encourage them to share with family, friends and networked connections.

Evaluate your progress. What’s working and what’s not? Keep and expand on the things that are working. Get rid of the things that are not (once you’ve given them a sufficient amount of time – roughly six months). Add something new that you think may have an impact. Then start over at whatever point in the process that makes sense for you.

Please consider these nine steps as a template to get you started and build on them. You want to begin this process sooner and not wait until later. Don’t wait to get it perfect. Start influencing your future 4Xers now and step up your efforts to keep the ones you’ve got.

Questions? At CAI we can walk you through this and most other employer challenges. Feel free to contact me at martin.morgan@capital.org or 919-878-9222.

Our environment has a significant impact on our mindset. Think about the last time you were around a group of positive people having a discussion. Chances are the topics included reasons for hope, giving people the benefit of the doubt, expecting the best and good things that are happening in the world.

How did you feel during and after that interaction? Energized? Excited? Like everything was going to work out well?

Now…think about the last time you were around a negative discussion. Maybe it was a group of people gossiping or finding the worst in people, or complaining about work, home, their commute or life in general. You may have initially tried to resist it, but the conversation sucked you right in.

How did you feel during and after that interaction? Defeated? Disgusted? Like everything is a waste of time?

Negativity seems to have the ability to sneak in and overtake our brain and our feelings. It’s hard to see positive outcomes when negativity takes over.

And it can be especially difficult to overcome negativity in the workplace in modern times when the negative news can outweigh the positive and we all seem to be busier than ever, yet feel that we are not getting any further ahead.

That’s one of the key reasons we invited Steve Gilliland to be the keynote speaker at our 50th Anniversary Celebration Luncheon on October 23, 2013 at the North Ridge Country Club in Raleigh. Steve is one of the highest-rated speakers we’ve ever had at our annual HR Management Conference. In fact, he was so great at our 2009 event that a large number of attendees asked us to bring him back in 2010…and we did. And again, he hit it out of the park.

Steve’s ability to mix an inspirational message with real life experiences and practical tips for getting the most out of every aspect of life is one of the reasons he was inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame last year.

So if negativity is a problem in your workplace and you’d like some tips on how to deal with it, while also helping us celebrate 50 years serving North Carolina employers, please join us for our 50th Anniversary Celebration Luncheon. Steve will inspire you and make sure you are ready to fight the evil forces of workplace negativity!

When you change or create a policy in your organization is it usually to restrict bad behavior or to reward good behavior?

For employers, as in life, many policies and procedures are created in response to or in fear of somebody violating a rule. When was the last time you were able to say to your employees, “Great news! We’ve created this policy that we know you are going to love!”

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink addresses this approach, encouraging employers to “Design for the 85 percent.” He describes how organizations are so focused on preventing the 15 percent of bad apples from causing trouble that they create policies that end up restricting the ability of the 85 percent of honorable employees from doing their best work. Pink references New York University professor Clay Shirky, who argues that the more we design systems to prevent bad behavior the more bad behavior occurs.

Pink sums up the section in the book by writing:

“If you think people in your organization are predisposed to rip you off, maybe the solution isn’t to build a tighter, more punitive set of rules. Maybe the answer is to hire new people.”

As more and more employers are focusing on retention, especially of top talent, maybe it’s time for you to review your policies and procedures.

Are they overly restrictive?

Are you making too many rules in response to or in fear of the 15 percent?

Could you implement policies that focus on rewarding good behavior?

Here are areas you may want to pay special attention to:

Vacation or PTO

Flexible scheduling

Education and career development

Social media

What policies could you change that would show your best employees that your organization is serious about keeping them on board?

We are excited to have Daniel Pink as one of the keynote speakers at our 2013 HR Management Conference on March 6th and 7th at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh, NC. For additional information, please visit the conference website at www.capital.org/hrconf.

Can it be that the only thing that matters in regard to driving employee engagement is hiring people with the right attitude?

That may be the case according to a new study that shows that 99 percent of highly-engaged employees say that they take personal responsibility for their engagement. The study comes as part of the research that Timothy Clark did for his new book The Employee Engagement Mindset. Clark and his team analyzed 150 highly-engaged employees in 50 different organizations representing 13 different industries.

In addition to taking personal responsibility for their engagement, the 99 percent also stated that they believe they, not their employer, hold primary responsibility for their engagement. In contrast, a vast majority of disengaged employees believe that their employer is primarily responsible for their engagement.

Too often hiring managers and HR professionals get so wrapped up in qualifications and demonstrated experience. They choose the candidate with the track record over the one with the great attitude and the thinner resume. Instead of playing to win, they are playing not to lose. Sure, there needs to be a baseline skill level to qualify for a job, but does it have to be so high?

In these days when we can bounce from articles on the importance of employee engagement to the scourge of unemployment to the skill gap between available jobs and talent, it seems to me that a statistic like the one above just screams for a different approach. If employers start focusing more on finding the right types of teachable people instead of demanding high levels of experience, won’t everybody win?

Of course, I’m not saying that employers should get a pass on creating a positive work environment and culture that encourages employees to excel and recognizes them for their success. That’s an important element, as well.

Nor am I saying that tomorrow you should get rid of everybody that you think may have a bad attitude.

However, I am encouraging you to ask yourself during every hiring process you are a part of, not “Who has the best qualifications for this job,” but “Who will bring the best attitude to this job?”

Articles about how your company culture and talent will be the key factors in your organization’s success, or lack thereof, seem to be everywhere. Some of these articles highlight specific focus areas for building a culture, and others include high-level theories without application.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Diane Adams and Richard Byrd from Allscripts discuss their corporate culture at a Raleigh Chamber of Commerce program. Diane, who is the executive vice president of culture and talent, and Richard, who is the vice president of internal communications/culture, shared both a high-level theoretical approach and more specific details about how it is applied in practice.

From 20,000 feet, the key takeaways from the presentation were:

Culture is Intentional

It’s important that you have a destination in mind and take ownership of your company culture. Your culture should then drive measurable behaviors.

Culture First

You can’t afford to lose precious time waiting to get to your culture. You must start now if you haven’t already.

It’s More Than Great People

You must continue to work deliberately on your culture. Hiring for cultural fit is just the start.

Inside=Outside

When your organization has a strong, positive culture with engaged employees your customers will have a great experience and your business will see the results.

Diane and Richard pointed to four key areas of focus at the application level when it comes to organizational culture:

Empowerment

Let your team members/employees own their job. When people own something, they usually treat it much differently and will go the extra mile to make it better. It’s also important to help them see how they impact the business results.

Communications

Without consistent, repetitive communication, culture is just some words put to paper. Make sure the lines are open to two-way communication and be aware that the words you use matter.

Respect/Civility

How people treat each other is a big piece of culture. Team members should interact in a positive manner toward each other, even when in disagreement.

Feedback/Development

Top talent wants to be in an environment where they are learning, challenged and feel like they are continuing to grow. Recognition is also important for all employees.

Having read many of the articles and heard numerous speakers discuss culture, I think there are two clear points to be taken from the chorus:

1 – You need to focus on culture now. If you put it off you will be looking back in six months and realize that your culture has taken on a life of its own—one that you may not like.

2 – One size does not fit all. It’s up to you to find those things that make your organization special and to highlight them, while also determining the aspirational goals for your culture and how you are going to work toward getting there. Sure, there may be some broad topic areas that need to be included, but the specifics are up to you.

Is your company culture what you want it to be? What are you doing to get it there?

Recent survey data released by Mercer offers a peek into the timing and competitiveness of what is likely to be an upcoming war for talent. You may be saying to yourself, “War for talent? What? Our business is still suffering from the recession!” Point taken.

Yet, to ensure the long-term success of your organization, now is the time to start focusing on keeping the top talent in your organization on your bus, and planning to invite other top talent in the marketplace to climb on board with you.

22 percent were never out of growth mode and were not significantly affected by the economic downturn

15 percent have emerged from the recession and are in growth mode

37 percent are emerging from the recession and preparing for growth

25 percent are still in recession mode

So, even if you are among the 25 percent of companies still in recession mode, 75 percent of businesses are already planning to acquire your top talent and/or the additional talent in the marketplace that could help drive your business results in the future.

In addition, more than half of the surveyed employers (51 percent) rate talent management as a top priority in their organization today, and 76 percent expect it to be a top priority within the next three to five years. Even more telling, a full 97 percent expect an increase in competition for key talent in that same three- to five-year horizon, with 58 percent anticipating a significant increase in competition for the key talent their organizations need to succeed.

What types of talent management activities can you undertake now to help you retain your best employees and position your organization to be an attractive option for future employees?

Identify the top employees in your organization. Talk to them and tell them they are an essential part of your future. Ask them what is most important to them in the employer-employee relationship. It may not be what you think.

Determine what measures you can take now to reward employees who have remained solid performers as your organization has been affected by the recession. If pay raises are not possible, use your discussions with employees to identify non-monetary rewards that will be perceived as an excellent benefit.

Start looking for skill gaps in your organization. Does each one of your employees have the training they need to be successful in their job? What will it take to get them there?

Plot out a growth strategy. If your business grew by 10 percent, what workforce adjustments would have to be made to accommodate that growth? What would be your priority order for hiring?

The skills that make an employee an excellent individual contributor or practitioner do not often translate to success as a supervisor or manager. Being responsible for the motivation and performance of a person or team requires a whole new skill set.

The resulting skill gap is highlighted in a survey conducted by the Tracom Group in 2007. That survey of 166 executives, 337 managers and 377 staff focused on how managerial responsibilities, specifically communication and conflict management, affect company performance. In the study, 84.8 percent of executives said communication skills were deficient among first-level managers, while 81.9 percent of managers and 85 percent of staff pegged poor communication as a cause of poor productivity in the workplace. In addition, 69.4 percent of the managers surveyed said their ability to better handle conflict would improve their team’s performance.

Of course, management development training is one of the most effective ways to enhance the communication and conflict resolution skills of managers. Unfortunately, one of the areas companies cut to minimize expenses during the recent recession was employee training. As a result, many supervisors and managers do not have the skills necessary to properly drive business performance and lead their teams to success. In a late 2009 survey conducted by the American Society for Training & Development of 1,179 companies, 31 percent of those companies cited managerial/supervisory skills as one of their greatest skill needs.

A March 2010 study done by Rainmaker Thinking further demonstrates the impact supervisors and managers have on overall performance. In the research, those companies that focused their efforts on increasing supervision and management, and creating a performance-based culture driven by supervisors and managers, had better results throughout the recession than companies that pursued other strategies such as cost cutting or innovation.

It’s clear that without the proper training, supervisors and managers will not be set up to succeed in their role. Many will become frustrated with their inability to produce results. Even worse, their techniques may leave the company liable to lawsuits.

As the economic recovery takes hold, organizations will be relying heavily on their managers to meet new customer demand and to keep their employees engaged so that they will stay with the company. To meet that challenge, employers must evaluate their supervisors and managers and invest now in the skills they need to excel in their role.

It’s an all too familiar refrain from HR professionals – employees missing response deadlines, asking why and when their benefits were changed, and getting upset about “new” policies. But you know that you’ve sent out a number of communications and done everything short of putting the employees in a closet and forcing them to fill out the required form or read the information.

I can’t promise you it will result in 100 percent participation, but one new trick you may want to try is social media.

“Social media?” you say. “Isn’t that just for people sharing their photos and the endless details of their monotonous lives?”

Well, yes, and no, but that really is the point. The key to communicating to an audience is to talk to them where they are, and it is highly likely that many of your employees are using social media. So how can you take advantage of the huge growth in social media usage to improve the responsiveness of your employees to important HR requests?

The first suggestion is to ask employees if they use social media and if so, what websites they most often utilize.

If most of your employees are not social media users, or if the ratio is around 50/50 but you really want to try something new, your best bet is to set up an employee communications blog. This will give you the ability to communicate the messages you’d like to send and to encourage the interaction of employees through commenting.

The process of setting up a blog can move quickly and easily, especially if you use one of the more common free platforms like WordPress or Blogger. You’ll want to privatize your blog if you only want those within your company to have access. Or you may want to show the world what a great company you have, which is the approach that Zappos.com takes.

Of course, the most popular social media platform right now is Facebook. Knowing that Facebook has such a large number of active participants may push you in the direction of setting up a corporate page for your employees. Setting up the page can be done quite quickly.

Keep two things in mind– your employees may not feel comfortable linking their private profiles to a corporate page, and you will have to adjust the privacy settings of your Facebook page if you only want employees to view it.

Another social media platform that may be more appropriate for your HR goals is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is most often thought of as the more professional social network. Through LinkedIn, you can set up a group that requires approval to join and invite employees. You can set your group up to automatically send e-mails when you’ve posted information, either discussions or news.

Twitter is another alternative you may want to consider. Setting up accounts on Twitter is easy, and you can protect your tweets. For your employees to receive the information you send, they will have to follow you. The challenge for communications using Twitter may be the 140-character limit per tweet. You could consider using it as a way to get the word out about a new post to your blog or Facebook page.

You may want to start by dipping your toe in one of these alternatives as a way to support the methods you already use, or you may be ready to completely transition. Either way it will be important that you fully research and understand the new platform you choose to use, whether it be a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or one of the many other alternatives.

Are you considering using social media for employee communications? What advantages and/or disadvantages do you see? If you’ve already implemented a social media platform, please let us know your thoughts on how it is working.

More than 350 company executives and HR professionals gathered at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh on May 12 and 13 for CAI’s 2010 Employment and Labor Law Update. The record-setting crowd heard about the latest changes in federal and state employment laws and what North Carolina employers need to be doing now to address these changes.

The two days were packed full with illuminating information, and there were many participants’ questions answered. To write about everything that was covered would take two weeks’ worth of daily blog entries. In lieu of that huge undertaking, here are five important points that were made:

1. A study released in September 2009 regarding wage-and-hour violations is driving the U.S. Department of Labor’s efforts to greatly increase its investigations into such non-compliance. The study is based on interviews with more than 4,000 “workers in low-wage industries” in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. The results were:

76% of those surveyed worked overtime the previous week but were not paid time-and-a-half

26% were being paid less than minimum wage

69% of workers entitled to a break did not receive the required break time

2. The U.S. Department of Labor is also making a large investment in pursuing the misclassification by employers of independent contractors. Three steps employers need to take to address this issue in their organization are: conduct a thorough, companywide risk analysis of your independent contractor population; design and implement a comprehensive compliance program; and establish an internal team to implement and monitor the compliance program.

3. Every organization needs to have a social media policy. The first question to ask is whether to create a positive/empowering policy or a negative/deterring policy? In other words, do you empower your employees to become ambassadors for your organization, or do you prohibit them from referring to it?

4. One of the most important things an employer can do to avoid violations under the new ADA Amendments Act is to train their supervisors how to respond to an employee’s request for accommodation.

Who We Are

CAI is a non-profit member based organization. We help more than 1,000 North Carolina member companies maximize employee engagement and minimize employer liability. We serve the greater Research Triangle, Piedmont, Triad and 65 central and eastern counties of North Carolina.